


Slow Burn

by FrankieFrancesFrancis_badcouldbeverse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Mutual Pining, Rituals, Second Chances, Spring, The Fundamental Things Apply As Time Goes By
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:08:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29396016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrankieFrancesFrancis_badcouldbeverse/pseuds/FrankieFrancesFrancis_badcouldbeverse
Summary: “I’m so sorry for your loss. I really am. I wrote to you, when Narcissa died.”“I know. Thank you.”She had written to him other times, too. Hermione thought it would be bad form to bring this up, to ask why he never responded.It no longer mattered whose fault it was they’d lost touch, and she chose to refocus on the man in front of her, orphaned and grieving, who was going to lose his home as well, unless she found answers soon.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 16
Kudos: 101
Collections: Dramione Valentine Exchange





	Slow Burn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Misdemeanor1331](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misdemeanor1331/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [DramioneValentineExchange](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/DramioneValentineExchange) collection. 



> Thank you for the prompt @Misdemeanor1331
> 
> *unbetaed and unalphaed--ran out of time to land this story unfortunately* I AM LOOKING FOR ALPHA/BETA HELP ON THIS FIC AND THE OTHERS, IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED!

Lucius had been dead for only three months when a copse of trees in the southernmost part of the Malfoy estate erupted in flames. Passing muggles from the nearest village spotted the smoke and called the fire department, who could do nothing but scratch their heads after hours of hosing down the same thicket to no avail. For this incident nearly fifty muggles had to be Obliviated.

The Obliviations had gone well as far as Harry could tell, but his Aurors' fire extinguishing spells fizzled. His brow furrowed at the flames' unceasing lapping not only at the twiggy canopies but at the trunks and entire root systems too. At that point he’d summoned Neville: maybe this was a magical botanical malady? Maybe the trees thought it was time to die?

“There’s no such thing as a green Gubthrainian, Harry.” Neville pitched indentations on the forest floor with his shovel. “Besides, the oaks and chestnuts may be ancient and moss-covered, but they’re non-magical as far as I can observe. Whatever this is, it’s not the trees.” 

Neville scooped up a patch of earth. Everything—the dark wet loam, the tender green buds of the early bluebells, some stray pebbles—burst into flames, and promptly ate a hole through Neville’s spade.

“That’s a bad sign,” Harry said. 

It was Neville who asked, “Have you brought in Hermione yet?”

* * *

Had it not been for the urgency of the case, Hermione might have paused to compose herself—to think about what she was going to say, to consider what might or might not be appropriate considering this was the first time she’d see Draco again after all these years, but when she turned up at the Manor he was already at the door, his arms crossed with his back resting on the jambs. 

“Draco,” she said. She stepped in front of him, then became aware that she didn’t know what to do with her hands, where to place them.

"Granger." He slipped his hands in his pockets. “What can I do for you?”

“Your property’s on fire.”

“Ah. I don’t know if I can help you with that. I’m not the one setting fire to it.”  
  
“I didn’t come all the way here to accuse you, Draco.” 

He gave a small nod, then stepped aside for her to pass into the foyer.

Their footsteps echoed in the hallways, and though Hermione was at first relieved that she did not have to field expletives from pureblood portraits, she soon grew unsettled at the rows of sheet-bound paintings leaning against the walls. What sparse furniture they passed were similarly enshrouded.

Even the parlour they stepped into had too few chairs for such a large room. She picked a seat adjacent to his.

“You didn't happen to receive any cursed objects lately?” Hermione didn’t want to point out that there were many who hated him still, but she couldn’t avoid it. “Or gotten any angry mail?”

“Nobody cares enough to send me Howlers anymore. ” Draco forced a smile that didn’t quite succeed in its contrivance. “I live a rather boring life, these days. But enough about me. You’re working in the Auror’s Office now?”

“No. I’m only here as a favour to Harry.”

“You haven’t come back to the country to join the DMLE, then.” 

“No. I never could reconcile my interests with the Ministry’s.”

Behind his glasses his eyes locked onto hers, as if probing for something. But he remained silent.

“Not that I mind helping out in an unofficial capacity,” she explained. “Harry’s team can’t figure out the fire, so here I am.”

He nodded, then cleared his throat. “I’ve heard, here and there, how you’re quickly becoming the best cursebreaker in the world.”

She smiled, pleased not only with his acknowledgement, but also at the thought that he'd kept up with news about her life, the possibility that he still cared for her in some way. “You could say I’ve had a lot of practice, what with all those afternoons we spent—"

“You travel a lot, then, for your job?” 

“I-I suppose I did, in the beginning.”

He had just sidestepped her reminiscing about their past, and she felt chastened, and oddly ashamed.

She glanced at the shelves in the room to redirect her focus. “The second half of my training was at dig sites. Would you happen to know if there are any bound artifacts lying about—ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian?”

A noncommittal shrug. “There are a lot of trinkets around. I would be surprised if any of them _weren’t_ cursed.”

She had expected as much. Hermione pressed on. “Any leads at all, so I know where to start? It’s only burning an acre here and there, but the fire will eventually reach the Manor by sundown.”

“Just between you and me? I hope the earth swallows it all up.”

“You can’t—you can’t mean that.”

But he didn’t respond, only turning his face towards the bay window that let the parallel slants of morning light reflect on his eyes. 

She took this opportunity to study him. When had he started wearing glasses? He ran his fingers through his hair, still the colour of washed-out straw except for the grey-white taking over his temples. She hadn’t thought about it except seeing him now Hermione realized that they had grown old, and grown old separately.

He turned his attention back to her. “My father passed away at the start of winter. My mother died five years ago.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss, I really am. I wrote to you, when Narcissa died.”

“I know. Thank you.” 

She had written to him other times, too. Hermione thought it would be bad form to bring this up, to ask why he never responded. 

It no longer mattered whose fault it was they’d lost touch, and she chose to refocus on the man in front of her, orphaned and grieving, who was going to lose his home as well, unless she found answers soon.

“How have you been managing, Draco?”

His exhale was long, drawn-out. “I keep thinking about everything my parents did, the people they became. What parts of themselves they had to lose. For this house. This name. All this”—an offhand wave to the room—“this legacy. And the cruelty of it all.” 

“Your parents didn’t know better.” And she was surprised to find out she believed that, as she said it. “Not to excuse anything. But in a way, they were victims of their upbringing.”

“Sometimes I think they could have found a way to be happy. But it’s too late for them now.”

“That’s not the case with you though, is it?” 

She offered this as softly, as tentatively as she could. But he looked sad all the same.

“Oh Granger. It’s always been too late for me.”

* * *

In the late afternoon Hermione visited Harry’s office, but she found that he’d been called into a Departmental Head meeting. In his place he'd stationed Ron to meet her. 

“Harry said you might want to look at this.” Ron waved a scroll at her. “It’s the Gringotts dossier on the Malfoy estate.”

Hermione took the file from his hands and unfurled it, reading and skimming over the details to find the necessary pattern that would connect the puzzle pieces she’d been shuffling in her head. 

A few paragraphs in and she felt her understanding click into place.

She looked up to find Ron staring at her.

“Whatever happened between you and him, anyway?” He blurted out.

“What do you mean?” 

“Padma told me how in your Eighth Year, you and Malfoy were sniffing around each other. Were you together?”

“No. Nothing. Well— _almost_ ,” she conceded. If she’d never told, it was because there hadn’t been anything to tell. “We could’ve, maybe, probably. But he had to leave Hogwarts halfway through the year, when Narcissa got sick.”

“I forgot about that. I do remember when Lucius was released half-catatonic from Azkaban.”  
  
“Even before he had to take care of Lucius, I was already gone for my apprenticeship. So, no, Ron, to answer your question, nothing happened between us.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ron said. And from that Hermione recognized the grace he was extending, in not bringing up the animosity between him and Malfoy. And maybe Ron was truly beyond all that, maybe forgetting was a function of time. Maybe without notice they had one day stopped being the children they once were. “I’m sorry you both never got the chance.”

“Me too, Ron.” She squeezed his hand, grateful for his abiding friendship.

* * *

In the grey gloaming the descending ash could be mistaken for snowflakes.

A pop of Apparition unsettled the ashes collecting on the gravelly pathway and distracted Draco from his thoughts. He saw that Hermione had returned, with a scroll of archival vellum particular to Gringotts, which meant that she must know and had come to confront him.

He strode outside to meet her halfway.

He had not wanted the fire to go on for as long as it did. He had forgotten about the spring equinox, and then the fires came, and easily the thought slipped into his head: why not?

He ought to have explained, or told Potter off, that there was nothing for it, the Manor was his to raze as he pleased. 

But instead of Potter _she_ had come, and it was with a caustic shame he realized that everything he felt for her in their eighth year, time had not taken away. Before her it was clear to him how his potential was diminished and wasted, while she moved onwards and forwards. 

They had talked, back then, of their hopes for the future. A career in the Ministry for her. Redeeming the Malfoy line for him. 

It had been a foolish child's dream to hope their lives would fall in step, to trust that they would once again get the chance to twine the loosened strands of their affection.

He’d only wanted to spend a little more time before she disappeared again, and maybe this time completely. 

“Draco, we need to talk,” she said.

He wondered if the look on her face was pity.

“As the sole Malfoy heir, the estate passed to you on Lucius’s death.” Hermione looked to him for confirmation. “An acknowledgement to the land must be conducted by the equinox.”

He nodded. “Failure to do so will be understood as a rejection.”

She pointed at a paragraph in the unwound scroll levitating before them. “It says here that the acknowledgement requires you to plant something on the ground. It’s an ancient pact of stewardship.”

“Yes. It’s probably the most innocuous of the Malfoy traditions, by far.” 

“I thought ‘most innocuous Malfoy tradition’ would go to the white peacocks.”

He smiled and shook his head. “No, they’re very bad-tempered birds.” 

“Draco, if you don’t do the ritual, everything will burn down.”

“I know, Granger.” He let out a shaky laugh.

He looked at the plumes of smoke billowing from the south, where his father once took him flying for the first time, on a training broom that had been his present the morning of his seventh birthday. The clutch of sadness in his gut tightened.

He’d played the dutiful son for so long that it was easy to disown the part of him that resented being trapped in the Manor, but in the months after Lucius’s death the guilt consumed him. The guilt that whenever the grief relented, he'd feel relieved. The guilt that he had not loved his parents enough, that even if he had spent the last decade taking care of them, he had in truth wanted to run away and live his life only for his sake.

And now that nothing was stopping him from leaving, he found himself unable to make any decisions after all.

“Hold on a second, I have something for you," Hermione said. "I hopped to my parents’ house briefly, to pick this up."

Out of her purse, surely spelled with an Extension charm, she pulled out a bush. A dewflower bush—broad leaves, clumps of verdant green on stems pointing every which way, mutinously alive—into his unready hands. Like it was the most natural thing in the world, like everybody knew Hermione Granger moonshines as a green thumb gifter, a one-person shrub shipment service—

“I figured you could plant this here, to fulfill the requirements of the ritual. And if not, it can be a housewarming present, for wherever you move next," she said.

She was asking a question, whether he was ready to accept the entire Malfoy legacy with its faded grandeur and its more recent ruinations, or was he fit to leave everything behind, face a fresh start that was as rootless as it was defenseless, but his mind could only focus on the plant before him.

He didn't know what to say.

A sweetness lingered in the air, no doubt from the white flowers that burst from the dense greenery.

Hermione's hands repeatedly wrung the straps of her purse. “Once, you gave me some dewflowers. That last time—the weekend before you left—we were out walking by the—”

“By the lake, I know. I remember, Hermione.”

“Ah. So you _do_ remember my name.”

That was fair. He deserved that. 

“You kept the flowers all these years?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”  
  
“You know why, Draco.”

Her voice sank as she said it. He looked at her open face, her clear tender face that reddened with the cold wind.

“It meant a lot to me, what we had.” She took a deep breath. The edges of her eyes shone, and her lashes fluttered once, twice. “I don't know if you remember—”

“I’ve never forgotten," he said. He had felt so ashamed of this, before, thinking she had moved on and he was the only one remembering. "Not a single moment. Not that day at the lake, the project—”

“The capstone project—”

“Yes, all the afternoons we spent working together. And that one morning, when I woke up early, making some excuse to tag along. Did you know then that I wanted to spend more time with you?” 

She smiled, and nodded. Yes, she had known. That morning by the lake, he lent her his coat and put his arm around her as she leaned into him. They had held hands walking back to the castle for breakfast, where he’d received an owl that Narcissa was sick. He was gone the next day.

“I picked up the dewflowers by the lake, tucked them in your braid. You kissed my cheek and I thought my life was going to start, right then.” He smiled at the memory of it, then shook his head. “I remember feeling glad that I was allowed happiness after all, that the war didn’t manage to waste everything, as I had of my life.”

“I don’t think it’s ever too late—not for any version of you.” She stepped closer.

“I thought then that my life lay in front of me, clear and bright, with you in it.” 

She reached out and placed her hands over his. “I’m still here.”

He drew her, at last, towards him. Between them the dewflower bush, attuned to the arrival of spring, waved its little green stems to welcome the season.

**Author's Note:**

> I AM LOOKING FOR ALPHA/BETA HELP ON THIS FIC AND THE OTHERS, IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED!
> 
> Thank you for the prompt @Misdemeanor1331 -- Happy Valentine's!
> 
>  **Prompt:** Drabble: Spring equinox, Malfoy family style  
> I tumble as [badcouldbeverse](https://badcouldbeverse.tumblr.com/).


End file.
